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branding

Branding is something you’re likely familiar with. Most people think of logos and color schemes when it comes to branding, but it’s much more than that. Branding is really what people think of when they see your logo or hear your name. Who Owns Your Brand? The truth is, you don’t own your brand – your brand lives in the minds of everyone else. I’ll give you an example. If I said the name Trump to you five years ago, you probably would have thought “real estate, hair, The Apprentice, New York.” But if I say the word Trump to you today, your response willRead More →

Visiting a local mall recently, I ran across a new attraction – Escape Room Pittsburgh Mills. You’ve probably heard of escape rooms – they’re the new Big Thing. The premise is that you need to solve clues to “escape” within a certain amount of time. Since I haven’t tried this before, I grabbed one of the flyers they had. Marketing doesn’t need to be a mystery, and oftentimes there are just a few things that can be done to bring your materials together. The best way to show this is to take real-world examples and show you what they did right and what can beRead More →

I have bad news for you. You don’t own your brand. I know you’ve spent a lot of time creating a logo and crafting your brand’s voice. You may have spent a lot of money doing this as well. Yet, you still don’t own it. You know who does? We all do. Your brand lives in the minds of everyone else. Your brand is what other people think about you. And as much as we marketers like to think we can control what other people think, we can only influence it. Think about the last time you went to a store and had a bad experience.Read More →

Today, Microsoft is unveiling a new logo for it’s search engine Bing, which is the second largest search engine following Google (of course). Advertising Age got a preview of it yesterday: Microsoft Updates Bing Logo as Search Service Grows Up. It’s not unusual for a company to tweak it’s logo now and then. I’m glad to see green instead of yellow, which is harder to read. The green definitely makes the logo more noticeable. Interestingly, and likely a coincidence, the original Bing logo from 2009 was blue (with a yellow accent) and their second logo from 2013 was yellow. Mix them together, and you get green! TheRead More →

Last week I had a great meeting with Eat The Butter founder Jenni Calihan to share with her some social media tips. Eat The Butter is a non-profit that is working to spread the word about Vintage Eating – basically, eating real food instead of diet food – through the power of mothers. Side note: permission to eat bacon, butter, and cheese? Sign me up! I love Eat The Butter’s look, and Jenni has done a great job branding the organization. She is tapping into the mother-brigade, which is very smart. I mean, how great is this?: Awesome, right? Since Jenni’s target audience is mothers, weRead More →

As your organization’s Facebook page reach has declined (which is on account of more competition, according to Facebook), it still remains the most popular social networking site, with 71% of adults who are online visiting it. That’s more than twice the amount of adults than those who visit LinkedIn (28%), Pinterest (28%), Instagram (26%), and Twitter (23%) – check out the full Social Media Update 2014 from PewResearchCenter. So what does that mean for those of us who manage Facebook pages? Well, we need to use every tool we have to make those pages and posts count. Here are 10 tips to help you enhance yourRead More →